December 11, 2019 • 59 mins
In the United States, people accused of crimes are entitled to certain well-known protections under the law. And, in the international sphere, global agreements theoretically guarantee certain rights to prisoners of war. However, in the wake of 9/11 elements of the US government felt these protections were preventing them from obtaining justice. They needed locations off the books. Places where the normal rules didn't apply -- places that, officially speaking, did not exist. Tune in to learn more about the rise of black sites.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name is
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you
are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. If you want to
be a part of the conversation as we delve into
today's rabbit hole, you don't have to wait till the
(00:45):
end of the show. You can just give us a
call directly and then you know, oh, push pause, give
us a call and then push play. Yeah, to make
sure your vehicle is not in motion and you're not driving,
or that you have one of those cool voice activated ones.
Definitely and where should they went there? Telephonic device fellas well?
You type in the numbers one, eight, three, three, st
(01:05):
d w y t K Yeah, give us a call
three minutes. Choose your time wisely and let us know
if you have something that you do not want to
end up on the air. Just please be explicit, you know,
you guys Here in Atlanta, I'm often taken in by
these fake rap songs that are on the radio that
are actually just advertisements for like one D you know
(01:29):
by gold or like an ambulance chaser type attorney. There's
a few of them that are really good. They're great,
and I always like find myself pop into him and
then I'm like, god, it got me again when they
dropped the call to action. You know, I like the
I I have no regrets. I like the ones have
six verses, and there are a few out there actually,
but you're like, I know this is an add but
it slaps. I know there's one call one hundred one
(01:52):
pain it a big one. My favorite is uh one
eight three three cars for kids five seven two four
five kids Boom airhorn. That's it. Yes. So we recently
did an episode diving into the strange story of closed cities.
(02:15):
These are places that in some cases did not or
do not officially exists. Many of them are radiated, and
many of them are Cold War relics located in Russia,
but not all of them. It's an interesting story and
it may hit close to home for some of our
fellow listeners. Today we're looking at something kind of related,
(02:36):
another sort of invisible place, a place where people officially disappear.
So here are the facts first prisons really starting on
an up note today, guys, prisons are an ugly fact
of every nation's existence. And if you have ever research
(02:58):
this or done some cursory bling in your time on
on the internet, you have found that some prisons, like
those in Norway, are held up as models of successful rehabilitation.
There there's a lot of good and bad press out
there about Norway's prisons. People who consider themselves hard on
crime will say that Norway is coddling criminals, and people
(03:19):
who consider themselves I don't know, maybe more progressive, or
people who have studied recidivism rates, will say that Norway
is enormously successful rehabilitating prisoners. And you know what, you
can't lie. You can pull up the pictures, you can
check out the prisons. They are very nice, considering that
their prisons they don't look like jails or prisons. And
some of the best attorneys in the world have come
(03:41):
out of Norwegian prisons where they got their degrees. I
did not know that well. Well, hanging out in bubble baths.
Well that's not true. Okay, sorry, I'm still back on
the lawyer rap tip. But you know, um, there's definitely
a broad spectrum of the types of activities and things
that go on in prisons. Norway possibly being the extreme
(04:04):
and the positive or you know, if you're hard on crime,
you can say in the negative, but focusing on getting
a person who's incarcerated back to existing and functioning within
normalized society, that's one extreme. That's one extreme. Then you
have places like South Africa where it's kind of just
all bets are off. I mean, they're absurdly notorious for
(04:26):
the types of horrible things that go on in there.
That's correct. The violence, the crime, and the corruption are
incredibly high. There is a triad of gangs that run
many of the prisons in South Africa. Believe the five
six is in the twenty seven's. They are much more
(04:48):
sinister than their names would lead you to believe. For instance,
one of the common punishments for someone who has broken
the codes or more as of the gang is for
someone to This is incredibly graphic, it may not be
suitable for all listeners. Is for someone to uh to
(05:10):
be wounded UH in their anus and then to be
assaulted by an HIV positive member of the gang. That
happens in South African prisons. In some cases, the prisoners
have almost as much power as the staff that technically
keeps an eye on them. So we have very very
(05:30):
very very very nice, sometimes called unfairly called i Kea
prisons in Norway, and then we have very very very
bad and dangerous places, and the US, depending on who
you ask, can fall somewhere in between. One thing that's
no secret is that there are a ton of prisons
and jails here in these United States. Yes, and you're
(05:52):
speaking about a ton of different places right very and
each each of those is its own ecosystem in lot
of ways. In the US, we have over seventeen hundred
state prisons, over a hundred federal prisons, and nine hundred
and forty two juvenile correctional facilities. But let's keep going here,
three thousand, two hundred and eighty three local jails and
(06:15):
seventy nine jails that are on um indigenous people's reservations.
And you might be saying to yourself, given the population
of our country, those numbers actually seem kind of low, yeah,
which means severe overcrowding in many of the nation's prisons.
Yet let's keep in mind this does not count military prisons,
immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the
(06:39):
many US territories. And that's not to say that the
kinds of things Ben, that you described taking place in
South African prisons don't happen in the United States. Largely
due to this overcrowding. UH. In New Mexico's State Penitentiary
in February of nineteen eighty, UM, prison inmates essentially took
over the facility and got a hold of what you
(07:00):
would call snitch files, where folks that were actually you know,
reporting on you know, illegal activity. Um, they end up
in these physical files in the prison warden's office, and
the folks that kind of took over the facility found
those single those people out and did things very much
in line with the kinds of tortures and punishments that
Ben was describing taking place in South Africa, involving genital
(07:23):
mutilation and you know, hanging from the rafters you know,
by um their necks and things like that, just absolute
unimaginable terror. And there has been a growing discrepancy between
the way that prisons in the US are depicted in
works of fiction, versus how day to day life is
(07:43):
for the inmates and the staff alike. The truth of
the matter is that conditions at these sites can vary widely,
sometimes due to issues of funding, and sometimes due to
the type of crimes a given inmate maybe found guilty of. Meeting.
For example, there are a lot of people who might
be in jail for a comparatively short amount of time,
(08:07):
and some some of our fellow listeners may have had
this experience at some point in their lives. In some cases,
you can also participate in work release programs. This means
that someone who's convicted of a crime and has jail
time to serve can serve that time on nights and
weekends such that they are able to hopefully maintain employment
(08:29):
while serving out their sentence, still be a part of
their local community, and hence be less likely to end
up back in jail. Jeffrey Jeffrey Epstein UM did definitely
have an extreme version of a work release program and
uh check out episode three on Jeffrey Epstein. I think,
(08:50):
depending on audience interest, I think we need to do
an episode for just to look at j Lane Maxwell exclusively,
I would agree with you. So what about the other
extreme of prisons, what like, if that's the if the
Epstein's and the white collar criminals of the world go
to what has sometimes been described as camp fed. You
know what, what's the what's the other the other far
(09:14):
end of the spectrum? Here you're talking about super max
facilities and this is um, it's a it's a different
kind of torture. I think being alone for long long
periods of time. Uh, inmates in places that would be
considered super max facilities could be alone in solitary confinement
(09:37):
for a year more than a year years um and
then a lot of times when they're when they're experiencing
that kind of thing, they will get some kind of
moment to themselves, basically an hour to be outside during
a single twenty four hour period. I'm not mistaken there
have been changes in the law surrounding confinement of solitary
(10:00):
isn't isn't it I mean a little bit more regular
than it used to be? Or is it still just
completely up to the discretion of prison officials, Because I
thought there were some human rights cases that sort of
prevented just Willy nilly shoving people in solitary and throwing
away the key. Uh. In two thousand and twelve, there
was a federal class action lawsuit against the Bureau of
Prisons and people who run the a d X shoe
(10:23):
or secure housing, security housing unit, it's the nice name
for these prisons. Uh. The case was dismissed, So now
I'm it's it's enormously controversial. The u N has condemned
the practice, but the the u N writes a lot
of condemnations without a lot of teeth behind them. And
(10:45):
super max is Uh, it's a prison within a prison.
And that thing that you're describing, matt where they get
outside time for an hour or whatever. It's pretty depressing
right there in a different cage outside. Yeah. So we
see this, We see this huge and this huge discrepancy
(11:07):
between some prisons or some detention facilities and another. But
one thing is not up for debate, going to a
point I believe you raised earlier. No, this doesn't sound
like a ton of facilities, right, given that the population
of the United States is in the three millions. The
US prison population, however, the actual people incarcerated is huge.
(11:30):
There was a two thousand eighteen report from the Bureau
of Justice Statistics that found, okay, the numbers are a
little walking, right, but they found almost two point two
million people are caught up in the system, or as
many as almost two point three million people, and that
came from the end of two thousand sixteen. That means
(11:52):
if we adjust for the population of this country, we
find a disturbing statistic. For every one thousand people residing
in the United States, approximately six hundred and fifty five
are behind bars as we speak, for one reason or another.
But there's another way to think about it. We we
(12:13):
can get lost in these numbers, and I think of
proportion is a good way to to to slice the
pie or let you see the larger picture. But we
have a good analogy to our good comparison would be
a better way to say it. Yes, So, if the
population um currently in US prisons was the population of
(12:35):
one city, it would be a city larger than Dallas
or Philadelphia, which as we know, we're pretty pretty populous
metro areas. It would in fact be one of the
ten largest cities in these United States, just a little
smaller than Houston, UM and a little bigger than Phoenix.
(12:57):
Staggering numbers. It's also again even more disturbing when we
realize that these numbers do not count hundreds of thousands
of people currently held in those other facilities, the military prisons,
the prisons and US territories, the detainment centers for immigrants
and their children, the ones that are often much more
(13:19):
difficult to even find out what those populations look like.
That's true, But wait, Ben, what if there's even more
to this story? Surely you jest, No, I do not.
What if there are other facilities, not detainment centers, immigration centers,
(13:39):
not your standard military prison. What if there's a much
more secret place where people could be held and are held,
Facilities like those closed cities in the Cold War that
do not officially exist, right, places where the normal laws
do not apply, where it's talking no real trials, none
(14:00):
of the normal avenues for parole, probation and so on,
severe constraints on your rights as an individual. What if
there are places where, in a very real sense, people disappear.
What exactly are these so called black sites? And we'll
get to that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
(14:28):
Here's where it gets crazy. Yes, it's true, this is
one of the things where we have a conclusive, concrete,
definitive answer black sites did and this is speculative, but
they probably do still exist almost certainly. Yeah, And to
really get a full picture of the development of this,
we're gonna have to zip back in time to that
(14:49):
fateful day on September eleventh, two tho one, when what
is officially recognized as a terrorist attack in New York
City and washing in DC call caused the Central Intelligence
Agency to um start to think outside the box, outside
the existing prison boxes, military situations that were already in place,
(15:12):
and to really go further um and create an entire
new network of facilities. I would say they're looking outside
of that system, as well as the judicial system in general, UM,
as well as maybe even oversight from the United Nations.
And it takes one of these. It takes something as
you know, life changing, as earth chattering politically and just
(15:35):
in terms of like day to day existence as September
eleven to really cause this kind of sea change where
it's like, you know, um, the ends justify the means
is sort of the order of the day. Right. The
idea here is something that we've we've encountered in previous
arguments for torture, which is the ticking time bomb scenario.
(15:57):
You have an individual that you cannot legally arrest, but
this individual has knowledge they could help you prevent another
huge disaster. So you do what's called an extraordinary rendition.
We move beyond the law. You take them someplace where
the law does not fully apply. The CIA started looking
(16:19):
for outside facilities where they could do this. They could
detain and interrogate people they believed it's a very important
distinction people they believed to be high level Al Qaeda suspects.
These secret prisons, known as black sites, were used by
the CIA to interrogate the folks they thought were terrorists,
often using um what are called enhanced interrogation by some
(16:43):
what are called torture techniques by others to obtain intelligence.
And we know that this program began mere days after
the events of September eleven. I mean, you want to
dive into the history, Yeah, we should and can do that,
and we're gonna do that with the help of a
u N report that was officially titled Report of the
(17:07):
Special Report Tour on the Promotion and Protection of Human
Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism by Ben Emerson. Yeah,
they put that's the uh, that's the guy right in
the report. This is where they write names like this
because people have already like tuned out by the time
they get to special reperture and they're certainly not going
(17:28):
to read the actual reporter. We will um, and we're
gonna give you a little exert here that I think
we'll we'll maybe do this round robin style. UM. On
seventeen September two thousand one, President Bush authorized the CIA
to operate a secret detention program. It's always written by
a brick because he's spelled program p R O g
R A M M E. That's the way. That's the
type of English the UN uses that right, Interesting, that
(17:50):
makes sense, okay. A secret detention program which involved the
establishment of clandestine detention facilities known as quote black sites
end quote on the territory of other states, with the
collaboration of public officials in those states, and just to
continue the quote here. At about the same time, he
George W. Bush allegedly authorized the CIA to carry out
(18:13):
extraordinary renditions, the secret transfers of prisoners outside any lawful
process of extradition or expulsion, enabling them to be interrogated
whilst in the formal custody of the public officials of
other states, including states with a record of using torture.
At the beginning of August two thousand to the Justice
(18:34):
Department's Office of Legal Counsel purported to authorize a range
of physical and mental abuse of terrorists suspects known as
enhanced interrogation techniques. So that's that's the end of the quote.
And that's a pretty pretty easy summation there. Now, people
who support the existence of black sites and the activities
(18:58):
that took place within these sites will insert a thousand
footnotes into that single paragraph, right and we will give
those We will give those opponents of this right up there.
Do However, everything in that paragraph is factual, that all
actually happened. It has been vetted. We can look at
(19:19):
examples of what black sites actually are. This iteration of
black sites. The first one was built in Thailand. It
was built shortly after the September eleventh attacks. That is
just surprising to to hear I think of thinking of
Thailand as being the first place. Well, Thailand is not
(19:39):
a place that pops up on the map in a
lot of areas. So for instance, if you suspected the
CIA to do something like this, one would naturally and
rightfully imagine that they would have a site that was
closer to the fracas, right, but this is Saudi Arabia,
probably sure, Yeah, I mean they would probably just rent
(20:00):
of the one Saudi Arabia already has. And this is
all done with full cooperation from these various governments, that
is correct. Yeah, So wonder what that negotiations like. Is
it calling in a favor, is it saying like, how
can we do this together and make it mutually agreeable?
Or is it basically just saying like, this is what's happening.
We will withhold aid from you if you don't help
(20:20):
us out. I'm wondering, I respect you. Well, there's a
there's a later on we'll get to an example from
Poland that has a good blow by blow of how
this happens. But I suspect it is a case by
case basis. You know, this is very much a situation
in which U. S. Intelligence is building the car while
they're driving the car, you know what I mean. Uh So,
(20:41):
back to Thailand, the American officers, they are repeatedly water
boarded at least two detainees. This was part of those
interrogation techniques that the rest of the world, by the way,
would later call torture. So waterboarding, for anyone who as
an experience that may sound relatively tame at first, it's
(21:04):
a simulation of the experience of drowning. So to anybody
who has been in danger of drowning ever knows that
it is not a pleasant way to go. What happens.
And there are you know, there are training courses where
people who will later use those techniques have to experience
it for themselves because you need to know at what
(21:26):
point to stop. But here's what happens. You are you
take the victim and you have a rag over their
mouth and their nose important, and then you just continually
pour a steady, consistent amount of water into their mouth
and nose through the rag while they're laying back or
(21:49):
sometimes even at a lower angle than while their feet
are elevated above their head. Yeah, and you know, usually
on like a plank. Right. And while that sounds tame
because you could say, well, they're not beating the snot
out of people. They're not breaking fingers or collecting finger
nails or teeth or whatever. This this is a incredibly
(22:13):
from experience, this is an incredibly unpleasant thing. I was
not water boarder by government agency, but it is an
extremely unpleasant experience, and more importantly, it is one that
can be repeated at nauseums. You can keep drowning people,
bringing them back, asking them to confess to something, and
then just almost drowning them again. It's like death simulation.
(22:36):
I mean, you know the things that kick in situations
like that are terror and anxiety and panic and and
just utter, you know, like not feeling safe in any way.
I think you hit it right on the head when
when you use the t word terror being inflicted then
(22:56):
on someone you know, perhaps suspected of being a terrorist,
because you know, it's it's exactly what you're saying. You're
simulating drowning, right, but it's it's it's like the most
advanced flight simulator that's ever existed, if you're thinking about
it as a one to one to flying or to drowning,
(23:16):
because your body experiences and then you know this exactly physically,
exactly what it would do if it were drowning. Now
I need as a bucket in a rag table. It's
also sometimes called dry drowning, which I think is a
more sinister phrase there. It can cause some serious physical damage,
(23:38):
even if a person does not die while this is happening.
And to to be fair on the side of people
who support this interrogation technique, it is it is described
as something that the people administering it have received extensive
training and such that they're not going to accidentally keep
(24:02):
someone asphyxiated for too long. All in all, there were
ten CIA prisoners that we know of who were arrested
or held on the soil of Thailand before being transferred
to Guantanamo Bay, which we all knew would show up
at least partially in this episode. Guantanamo Bay is is
located on the island of Cuba, and these folks were
(24:26):
transferred without any kind of due process or hearing. That's
according to a report by the Open Society Justice Initiative
from two thousand thirteen. Funny story about this, It is
the worst kept secret in Thailand. There There have been
successive members of the Thai government in the military in
(24:48):
the years following this, and one thing they all have
in common, as they have all denied that this ever happened,
that there was a black site. It's all a big misunderstanding.
These are not the droids you're looking for. These prisons,
we're not just in Thailand. They were initially located in
at least eight different countries. They were classified, and they
(25:08):
were so classified that information on each one was known
only to the President, a few other US officials, and
the people doing the dirty work. And you know, there
were a lot of problems pretty obviously on the on
the face of these kinds of things, but I would
have seen that country well yeah, um, but a lot
(25:31):
of these problems started to show up pretty quickly after
there these sites were established. Yeah, at least twenty six
people were held due to cases of mistaken identity. Um.
There's there are a couple of great documentaries around surrounding this,
something about the taxi. I can't remember the name of it,
(25:51):
but there's a fantastic documentary that came out in the
mid two thousand's about a taxi driver that just ended
up at Quetanabo. Crazy. That's the thing. If you're there
due to a case of mistaken identity and you have
no recourse to getting you know, your case heard and
proving that you're not this person, at that point, you
just become like collateral damage of this system and you're
(26:14):
just stuck, like, what what do you do? It's it.
It gives me a panic attacks thinking about it. Also,
add to that the language barrier. You know, these uh
many of these interrogators would have a translator of some sort,
but the interrogators themselves were often not fluent in the
language spoken by the people being detained. So yes, at
(26:38):
least twenty six people, at least twenty six people were
totally not supposed to be their their name just sounded similar,
or there was a vague description, or they were turned
over when reporting suspected terrorists became incentivized, which is a
different problem. Second thing that cropped up almost immediately the
(26:59):
c i A. It's caught lying to Uncle Sam along
with some other members of the CIA who had a
problem with this, because again, although it's tempting and it's
easy and cognitively delicious to think these are monolithic entities,
they are not. There are people within their wheels, within wheels,
there are people competing for the same positions. There's a
(27:21):
left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
Kind of situation that crops up, and that's what compartmentalized
intelligence is all about so. According to The Washington Post,
in at least one case, an internal CIA memo relays
instructions from the White House to keep the program secret
from the Secretary of State. The guy whose job is
(27:42):
literally to know what's going on here. That was then
Secretary of State Colin Powell, and they wanted to keep
it a secret from him out of concern that he
would quote blow his stack if he were to be
briefed on what's going on. Wow. Wow, the guy that was, uh,
you know, giving a hearing in Congress showing the yellow cake.
(28:05):
He's the guy who you're like, yeah, we can't let
him know about this. He got misled several times, Yes,
he did in his career. So of a hundred nineteen
known suspects who were held, thirty nine of them were
um subjected to this were this story is full of
these absurd terms, sort of these sanitized versions of the
same idea enhanced interrogation. Was that a chainey thing? That
(28:27):
was a chainey thing? I feel like the I think
it was the lawyer who his name escaped you Yeah, no, yeah,
not you? Why oh yes? Yeah. The thing is these uh,
these these are like any other buzzwords often the original
author of the buzzword is he's not going to be
(28:50):
super jazzed about it. Yeah, no, it's true. Um, but
these techniques referred to pretty controversially as enhanced interrogation, were used,
and we'll get into more on that and just a bit.
But some of these things included, um, being slapped and uh,
this concept of walling, which is new to me, and
(29:11):
that's when people were slammed against walls, along with of
course water boarding and sleep deprivation. And you know, we
we've seen some of these photos with the forced nunity
from the Abu Grade prison where folks are forced to
stand on buckets for extended periods of time with like
bags over their heads and the completely stripped naked. Um,
it's just a lot of it comes down to humiliation
(29:33):
as well. Yeah, and at times, these this stuff included
even more egregious acts. There were incidents of physical abuse,
sexual assaults, threat I believe the photos you're referring to
specifically feature people being threatened with military dogs. The thing
(29:53):
about these techniques is they were chosen on purpose because
they could be applied repeatedly for days or weeks at
a stretch. And I just want to confirm off air.
We we checked back to this to make sure that
we were correct. It was John you John tune you Uh,
an attorney, law professor, former government official. He was the
(30:14):
author of the so called torture Memos, in which the
phrase enhanced interrogation, as you might assume, shows up quide often.
Seven of the people subjected to these techniques produced no
intelligence whatsoever. What do we mean when we say they
produced no intelligence whatsoever? We mean that they didn't even
(30:35):
produce incorrect intelligence. They didn't even panic and say, well,
maybe that guy I went to college with, maybe maybe
he's the one you're looking for. Or yeah, I'll say
anything you want me to, just please stop drowning me.
And at least three were confirmed to be subjected to waterboarding.
We know about the two in Thailand. There's one other,
but there are many, many more reports. A little bit
(30:58):
earlier in the show, we mentioned that we had a
a specific example that gives us a look at the
money and the operation in the blow by blow, day
by day operation involved let's pause for word from our
sponsor and then let's travel to Poland. Okay, so we're
(31:20):
back and we are now in Poland. You probably didn't
expect to head that way episode. No one expects to
go to Poland, I know, except for um the Germany
went there one time, if I recall, yeah, yeah, I
mean nowadays, no one expects to go to Poland. Yeah,
but it is interesting that we ended up there with
(31:43):
one of these black sites. It was one of the
first and one of the probably the most important europe
European black site. It was. It was there in Poland.
The CIA made a fifteen million dollar deal with their
intelligence agencies, their intelligence structure there to build the site,
and they called it Courts, or at least they referred
(32:03):
to it as Courts q U A r t Z. Yes.
The accommodations at Courts were not on the level of
a Norwegian prison. Instead, they they could only hold a
handful of detainees. There was very, very sparse accommodation. There
was a shed behind the house that was also converted
(32:26):
to a cell. Now, if this sounds a little bit clandestine,
it's because it was, you know, with the biggest the
biggest task or obstacle in front of the Polish and
American authorities was to make sure that this remained the
stuff They don't want you to know very much. They
wanted people to think this was just a villa, right
(32:49):
and if someone were to look, say via satellite, and
wanted to be too obvious that this was an illegal
jail prison to archer chamber that did not officially exist.
There was one room where detainees could ride a stationary
bike or use the treadmill if they cooperated. We do
know that despite the problems, despite the injustices evolved, the
(33:12):
system kept growing. It went global, it became an international franchise.
At least fifty prisons have been used to hold detainees
in over twenty well in twenty eight countries, and that's
in addition to twenty five more prisons in Afghanistan, twenty
in Iraq. UH. There's also there's also this story in
(33:34):
this room or in this allegation of floating prisons, which
I thought was incredibly devious and brutally clever. And it's
estimated that the US had seventeen of those UH starting
from two thousand one, which brings the total estimated number
of prisons operated by the US and our allies UM
in order to house alleged terrorists since the thousand one
(33:57):
two more than one hundred and other countries that held
suspects on behalf of the U s included I'm I'm
gonna caution, let's try not to do the Animaniac. Yeah,
it's a lot. You got Algeria, now you can't do
um Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, uh Did, Jibouti, Jibouti. Yes, that's
a Thesa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Libya, Lithuania, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan,
(34:27):
uh Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Somalia, South Africa, Thailand,
United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zambia, and according to the
Human Rights Watch, the US held detainees from many different
countries around the world, twenty one in all, including some
that will be easily recognizable and something that might be
(34:49):
a little bit surprising, so detainees from Algeria, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq,
Gaza in the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, or Mon,
Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Sweeten, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the UK,
and Yemen, including a guy named Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the
(35:12):
you know, the quote mastermind of nine eleven. Um outside
of Osama bin Laden of course, um. But he was
held in that Poland spot for quite a while there
where he was waterboarded and all the he was enhanced,
lee interrogated. Then he was moved several times to different places.
But it's interesting too to think that someone of such
(35:37):
a considered to be such a high level target would
be kept in that two story villa in Poland, just
hidden somewhere. Yeah, I'm sure the the security was, I'm
sure it was robust, but it wasn't enough. In several
of these black sites, the detainees were you know, they
(36:00):
they have been tortured for whatever information they were perceived
to have, and then they were shipped to a place
that was deemed more secure or at least marginally more
legal than That is where Guantanamo Bay comes into play.
Guantanamo or get Mo, as it's been called before, is
not exactly the same as a black site because it
(36:20):
was not purposefully built for secret detention in the wake
of nine eleven. Guantanamo Bay as a US possession has
been around for a long time, and it has a
It has a strange history because Guantana it's on Guantanamo
Bay Naval Base, right and and and it's been there
in some form since nineteen o three. So even when
(36:43):
the US and Cuba have very antagonistic relationships or you know, interactions,
Guantanamo Bay is still around and has stood the test
of time. So it does have this in common with
black sites. Detainees from these secret sites were sent to
Guantanamo obey and they were also subjected to enhanced interrogation
(37:05):
techniques there with some real, uh some real psychologically disturbing
torture as well. They tried to get into not just
physically threatened people, but also get into their heads and
uh humiliate them. Yeah. There's a twenty two five report
that was presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee, I
(37:26):
guess um, and it detailed the interrogation of one man
who was considered the twentieth hijacker in the nine eleven attacks.
His name was Mohammed al Katani. Might remember his name
from news reports over the years. Um. He was supposedly
forced to wear a bra to dance with a man
and do what we're called dog tricks while tied to
(37:49):
a leash, sit laid down so very much. Uh, just
breaking him down essentially psychologically. But but but military investigators
said this was not considered something that was prohibited um
so in and they did not consider it inhumane treatment either.
I gotta wonder, like, do you think there's a committee
(38:11):
that comes up with this stuff or is it just
sort of like improv or do you mean the torture
like that that's so specific? You know, it's like like
like do you think it was like the guards are
like the interrogators that's come up with this or is
there somebody higher level like committee or board that comes
up with quote unquote acceptable humane form Because obviously waterboardings
(38:32):
a go to because it's not going to kill them. Uh,
it's considered maybe less problematic than like attaching electrodes to
somebody in a car battery, you know, but like it's
definitely still pretty rough. But I'm wondering, like where do
these go to tortures come from? Like we definitely not improvised, Yeah,
I mean I don't think so either, But I'm wondering where,
(38:55):
like if there's a committee that there's specific job is
to come up with this stuff in some you know,
dark and room, well a lot of these techniques have
stood the test of time. It's not for nothing that
people decide to pursue the similar UH techniques of physical
or mental stress. I would I would draw everyone's attention
(39:16):
to earlier published memos and pamphlets from the CIA in
UH that were put out in South American countries, in
Central American countries that were meant to educate people on
how to be insurgents and meant to give you some
information about how to torture someone without killing them, because
(39:36):
the thing is you want to get them right to
the line, right. UH. There are some things that are
so messed up they sound like they occur in fiction,
but there are real cases. For instance, if you read
some of this stuff where someone who is going to
torture a detainee right will say whether for this government
or another government, they'll they'll walk in and they'll be
(39:59):
your friend on a chat with you. Make sure you're hungry,
you need anything, you like sprite. I heard your expect
Let's get this guy sprite. And then they'll have a
conversation like, Okay, look there's some stuff that we think
you know. We know you know it, and we want
you to tell us, but to me. It doesn't matter
(40:21):
what you say. You and I are going to be
quite close check this out. And then when they say
check this out, they will harm themselves in front of
the person, you know, like cut their arm such that
bleeds copiously, but not you know, lethally, not a north
to south kind of cut, just like flu vertical cut
like that with their arm hanging out of kimbo. And
(40:42):
then they'll hold it there and like, I just did
this to myself, What do you think I'm going to
do to you? That kind of stuff. You're not physically
hurting the person, but you're in your their head and
that thing. While it sounds like complete malarkey written by
a screenwriter somewhere, that has happened before, and people do
that because it works. So all this stuff and answer
(41:04):
to your question is not is largely not improvised. Yeah,
And it's also one of these things where it's like,
to the subject being on the receiving end of said torture,
they're like, go back to being nice again, whatever I
whatever I have to do to get you back to
where you were, where you were giving me a sprite,
you know, and being my friend. But I'll do that,
(41:26):
you know, it. Literally, it's like you're you're showing this juxtaposition.
You're like you're baiting and switching, and then you're like
whatever it takes to get back to that first version
of you. You know. So let's jump back here in time.
We're we were talking about that two thousand five report
they went to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and then
the next year, in September of two thousand six, UH,
(41:48):
the president at the time, George W. Bush, acknowledged that
the CIA had indeed held suspected terrorists in these places,
these secret prisons overseas in different countries. He also announced
the transfer of fourteen specific captured al Qaeda operatives. Again,
like you're just kind of he's just announcing this to
(42:09):
the public. We just say, okay, those must be al
Qaeda operatives, But he's saying fourteen captured al Qaida operatives
who are being transferred, including Mohammed bin al shib and
Abu Zubayah to to Guantanamo Bay. So two thousand six,
UH is when the President of the United States says, yes, indeed,
(42:30):
we are keeping people in secret places and we're shipping
people now to get and there's been a lot of
work leading up to this as well. There's some fantastic,
i would say, heroic journalists such as Dana Priest, who
did a lot of work for the Washington Post on
this subject. So when it was confirmed by the then president,
(42:51):
it was already something that was widely suspected or even
already considered to be true by people. A little more
on the fringes of the national and international conversation. Let's
fast forward. As you may know, neither the naval base
nor the detention center are closed. Last year January, President
(43:13):
Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep the detention
center open and also to approve the transfer potential new
prisoners to the site. So not only is it not closed,
it might actually grow. There was a well, there having
a series of legal challenges to this because these people
(43:34):
are often you know, they're not experiencing due process. Uh.
There have been people who have been held for years
and turned out that they were completely the wrong person. Right.
In June of this year, the Supreme Court of the
US rejected a challenge to the indefinite detention of guantanam
obeyed detainees who have yet to be charged. Imagine being
(43:58):
detained indefinitely no charges brought against you for almost twenty years.
Twenty years, that's how that's how long ago this was.
Now it's basically saying we have enough evidence, like this
is what you have to imagine the authorities saying to you,
as the individual, we feel as though we have enough
evidence to convince us that you were definitely and a
(44:21):
heinous person who has done heinous things or is plenty
of heinous things, but we don't have enough evidence to
you know, take you to trial anywhere, or we don't
have a place in which we can try you for
these crimes. It reminds me of the way they used
to be able to, like, you know, a king back
in the dark ages could just throw somebody in the dungeon,
(44:41):
you know, and throw away the key, with no trial,
no due process, and they wouldn't even have known what
they have done. You know, I think of the abuses
that that are likely inherent in this system. You know,
people with a grudge of people where someone maybe has
some dirt who knows. I mean, I'm you know, I mean,
I think it's certain. What I'm saying is when you leave,
(45:02):
when you lack accountability, um corruption tends to run free. Well,
and the other thing is just how how human beings,
through the legal ease and the manipulation of the law
are are categorized. Right. We we've talked about this before
on this show. But the concept of I believe it
(45:23):
was during the Barack Obama's presidency where I think it
was it was under his watch where males of a
fighting age in any country where the United States is
engaged militarily are considered an enemy combatants. Right. Yeah, Um,
that means if you're within that age range and you
are a male, then you could just be at a
(45:45):
black side. The assumption is right, This is this is
fascinating in a in a terrible, terrible way. We do
have to also again, and to be fair, we have
to point out that the cause some of these people
were victims of mistaken identity, because some of these people
were accused of crimes that they did not commit. It
(46:06):
does not mean that everyone there was innocent, absolutely right,
That's why it's so difficult. Right. And of the fifty
four countries that the Open Society that we mentioned at
the top of the show, the fifty four countries that
Open Society confirmed as having captured, held, question, tortured, or
helped transport these detainees for the CIA, Fewer than half
(46:28):
of them have opened any kind of domestic inquiry or
had any court cases challenging their involvement. Means, in a
very real sense, the stuff continues to officially not exist.
But here is the ultimate question. Did these black sites
and the interrogations performed within actually produce results? Plot twist
(46:49):
spoiler alert. The CIA believes so. In case that was
a big Shamalan moment for anyone, Yeah, they, I mean,
they almost kind of have to believe so. And we
have a here from the CIA Director John Brennan, or
at the time CIA Director John Brennan. UM. He gave
this official statement. Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees
(47:11):
on whom enhanced interrogation techniques were used, did produce intelligence
that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.
The intelligence gained from the program with critical to our
understanding of al Qaeda and continues to inform our counter
terrorism efforts to this day. Um Congress, this is out
(47:33):
of the quote. On the other hand, did did not
agree right right? So for uh, many of us listening,
or at least a few of us listening, this feels
like an ugly, ugly reality, you know what I mean.
War is brutal thing. And when we are when we're
in that hypothetical situation where doing something abominable to one
(47:57):
person may save hundreds of thousands, very close to that
needs of the many out number the needs of the few,
kind of cold logic argument. Right, what if those numbers
are just torture or do terrible things to one person
and save ten, Right, even then the ratio still holds.
(48:18):
Your say, you're you're creating more net good by doing
a little bit of evil. And the problem with that
kind of experiment is that it is very very rare
for someone to know with certitude that their activities prevented
a disaster or a catastrophe, because by preventing it, it's
(48:42):
never happened, you know what I mean. It's kind of
like the psychic prediction problem, whereas someone says, oh, I
have a premonition, Paul, mission control, decond do not take uh,
do not take your car to I don't know, and
to a trip on Thanksgiving or something, because there will
be an accident. So maybe they just go a different
(49:05):
route and nothing happens. You know what, I mean, or
take a flight, or take a flight and nothing happens.
So amongst the people who disagreed with that stance, amongst
the people who disagreed with the CIA's pro interrogation, pro
black site stance were members of Congress. Actually just Congress
disagree because one thing Congress used to really have a
(49:27):
problem with was being lied to in their December nine report,
which was called the Committee Study of the Central Intelligence
Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program. Again you have to love
the sexy titles. Uh, they found twenty different findings that
were published wherein they took the CIA to task. They
deemed the activities the legal. They said, he this doesn't work,
(49:48):
b stop lyne and and it went on and on.
The weird thing about the report is that it is
six thousand pages long. Five and twenty five of those
pages were declassified, along with an executive summary, which is
where most people got the facts. Right now, we do
(50:10):
have an answer to the the original question. We do
know the black sites did exist. They were highly illegal.
Despite the arguments made in court right and despite the
clear illegality as espoused by members of the legislative branch,
it appears the judicial branch of this government is stonewalling
(50:34):
at different turns, right, and they're saying, well, again, it's ugly.
It's a special case. We have to protect the many,
and we don't know if there are other black sites
out there. It feels like one of those terrible dark
truths ugly secrets that almost it's so weird because on
(50:58):
this end, you know, as American citizens sitting in this room,
in the privilege that we have just by existing in
this country, Um, it feels in this really messed up
way good to know that this kind of thing is
out there to ostensibly protect us here in this country. Right.
(51:21):
I think we have to acknowledge that there's like a
there's a weird sense of like, okay, well, at least
at least it's our my people, our people, our side,
the good guys doing this thing. Right. Um, those are
all like subjective terms to to put on the American authorities.
(51:41):
But I I wonder what that feels like, what it
truly feels like inside from let's say a Polish citizen
who finds out that there was a black side in
their country where this kind of thing is being carried
out on their soils. Well, I guess that all depends
on how much benefit they feel like getting from their
relationship with the United States, which varies from country to country,
(52:04):
and then those arrangements, right, I don't know like that,
like like the whole thing with Trump supposedly withholding aid
from Ukraine in that situation, Ukraine really needed that aid.
So there's a quid pro quote. I mean, not to
throw around the buzz term of the moment, but there
is an absolute benefit as a country where you say, oh, okay,
the US is giving us this military aid. Therefore maybe
(52:27):
we'll turn the other cheek or you know, well we'll
turn the other way if we think they're doing some
nefarious stuff on our turf because we feel like they're
actually actively helping us and having better lives. Sure, I
don't think you could. I don't think you could occur
without some kind of pretty heavy incentive like that. It's
just to your point that you're thinking, like, how the
average citizen, how do they feel about it? Well, yeah,
(52:48):
I mean you're talking. I mean, we we listed off
the number of places where these black sites existed in
In a lot of them, you can imagine the citizens
of those countries being at risk of ending up and
you know, and it's a it would be a very
small proportion of the citizens on almost not making you know,
(53:08):
wouldn't wouldn't even be a blip on on a calculator.
It's just, um, I don't know. To me, I'm interested
in the mindset of just somebody knowing that's happening, because
it's very it feels even though even though sitting in
this room as an American citizen kind of feels not okay,
(53:30):
but like I'm not scared about it, oh right, because
you probably won't get black backed for now, for now. Yeah,
that's I mean, that's a very good point because we
know in our previous episode it is completely possible for
people to lose or hide entire cities with populations of thousands.
So having a small area where you have a handful
(53:53):
or at the most hundreds of detainees who have been disappeared,
it's oh disturbingly plausible that that could happen, could be
happening now, and it would be no proof and maybe
the people who live in the next town or village
over just have have been have been given to understand
(54:13):
that no one goes near the old dairy factory. You
know what I mean, that's all it takes. It's all
it takes. And this this leads us to the question
that we cannot really answer. Will this happen in the future.
Have these black sites actually closed or have they just
moved further from the public eye. If that is the case,
then these locations remain the stuff they don't want you
(54:38):
to know. This ends our episode, but not our show. Yes,
please write to us on our social media if you
have thoughts on this episode, if you live in a
country where one of these black sites existed, or maybe
you heard about them, or you've had any experience with
any of this, and you can speak to it. Um,
(55:00):
please write to us. Find us on Twitter, on Facebook
where we're conspiracy stuff. We're conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram. UM.
If you don't want to do that stuff, you can
find us on Here's where it gets crazy. It's our
Facebook page. Um, what what's the official title for that.
It's a group Facebook group. It's a group, yeah, community page,
you could call it. Yeah. And you can go on
(55:21):
there and speak with your fellow listeners and with us.
We're on there occasionally too, and you know, get into
the conversation. We'd love to talk about this a little
further and know what you think and what you've experienced. Yeah,
and um, if you want to hit us up as
individuals outside of this show collective situation, you can do
(55:41):
that as well. I'm on Instagram exclusively at how Now
Noel Brown, mainly just hanging out with my kid and
I go to shows and um take a lot of
food picks. If you're into that, you can find all
that stuff and more there. And before I get black bagged,
you can find me on Instagram under the insanely creative
handle at Ben Bowlen. You can also find me and
(56:05):
several of my uh cohorts and fellow miscreants on Twitter
where I'm at Ben Bowlen h s W. Matt. Should
we have the conversation again about Instagram? I deleted it,
you guys? Really? Yeah? I deleted my Instagram, Yeah, the
one you just created. Yeah, it got too hot. It
(56:26):
was just, I mean, I was blown up. I had
like a hundred followers, a lot of deep fakes. Yeah,
I was getting d M. I'm just no, I'm just kidding.
It's still there. It's a Matt Frederick underscore. I heart
Oh it's not Oh fake, faked you out? I thought
it was still at face tats supreme, faced that supreme. Yeah,
(56:51):
that's not you. Well, I have been having a deep
conversation with the wrong person. Like man, you never know
if you're talking to me on line or not. Alright,
shout out to you at face tests supreme. But hey,
if someone hates the social needs, if someone doesn't care
to engage with it, we of course get it. We
did several episodes on how Facebook is bad for you,
(57:15):
and everything we said in those things either came to
pass or was already happening when we did those episodes.
We get it. You can reach us directly. We have
a call in number. We can go ahead, and we
we shared it at the top of the show. Yes,
but let's let's share it again. We are one eight
three three st d w y t K. One last
(57:37):
thing here before we go. Um, and it's just because
we're right at the end here and a very tiny
proportion of you are actually listening right now. Statistics prove
this is the case. We we've seen the numbers. Um,
just we see you, We see you those of that
have remained. Just just just a quick quiz for you
out there. Um, if you see some Terry's trying to
(57:58):
get froggy? Do you a fireboard those mother jammers have
the same thing as waterboarding them? Do you be hypothetical
them in the classical? Or see do you drags alm clowns?
So we'd like to hear your responses to this uh.
And in addition to hearing which of those three you choose,
(58:22):
we'd like to hear why you chose that, because you
know this is a subject of intense debate here in
the studio. And if none of those previously mentioned avenues
of communication quite bad, your badgers, We have good news,
despite it being here at the very end of the decade.
We have an email address you can write to us directly.
(58:44):
We are conspiracy and i heeart radio dot com. Yeah.
(59:06):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name is
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you
are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. If you want to
be a part of the conversation as we delve into
today's rabbit hole, you don't have to wait till the
(00:45):
end of the show. You can just give us a
call directly and then you know, oh, push pause, give
us a call and then push play. Yeah, to make
sure your vehicle is not in motion and you're not driving,
or that you have one of those cool voice activated ones.
Definitely and where should they went there? Telephonic device fellas well?
You type in the numbers one, eight, three, three, st
(01:05):
d w y t K Yeah, give us a call
three minutes. Choose your time wisely and let us know
if you have something that you do not want to
end up on the air. Just please be explicit, you know,
you guys Here in Atlanta, I'm often taken in by
these fake rap songs that are on the radio that
are actually just advertisements for like one D you know
(01:29):
by gold or like an ambulance chaser type attorney. There's
a few of them that are really good. They're great,
and I always like find myself pop into him and
then I'm like, god, it got me again when they
dropped the call to action. You know, I like the
I I have no regrets. I like the ones have
six verses, and there are a few out there actually,
but you're like, I know this is an add but
it slaps. I know there's one call one hundred one
(01:52):
pain it a big one. My favorite is uh one
eight three three cars for kids five seven two four
five kids Boom airhorn. That's it. Yes. So we recently
did an episode diving into the strange story of closed cities.
(02:15):
These are places that in some cases did not or
do not officially exists. Many of them are radiated, and
many of them are Cold War relics located in Russia,
but not all of them. It's an interesting story and
it may hit close to home for some of our
fellow listeners. Today we're looking at something kind of related,
(02:36):
another sort of invisible place, a place where people officially disappear.
So here are the facts first prisons really starting on
an up note today, guys, prisons are an ugly fact
of every nation's existence. And if you have ever research
(02:58):
this or done some cursory bling in your time on
on the internet, you have found that some prisons, like
those in Norway, are held up as models of successful rehabilitation.
There there's a lot of good and bad press out
there about Norway's prisons. People who consider themselves hard on
crime will say that Norway is coddling criminals, and people
(03:19):
who consider themselves I don't know, maybe more progressive, or
people who have studied recidivism rates, will say that Norway
is enormously successful rehabilitating prisoners. And you know what, you
can't lie. You can pull up the pictures, you can
check out the prisons. They are very nice, considering that
their prisons they don't look like jails or prisons. And
some of the best attorneys in the world have come
(03:41):
out of Norwegian prisons where they got their degrees. I
did not know that well. Well, hanging out in bubble baths.
Well that's not true. Okay, sorry, I'm still back on
the lawyer rap tip. But you know, um, there's definitely
a broad spectrum of the types of activities and things
that go on in prisons. Norway possibly being the extreme
(04:04):
and the positive or you know, if you're hard on crime,
you can say in the negative, but focusing on getting
a person who's incarcerated back to existing and functioning within
normalized society, that's one extreme. That's one extreme. Then you
have places like South Africa where it's kind of just
all bets are off. I mean, they're absurdly notorious for
(04:26):
the types of horrible things that go on in there.
That's correct. The violence, the crime, and the corruption are
incredibly high. There is a triad of gangs that run
many of the prisons in South Africa. Believe the five
six is in the twenty seven's. They are much more
(04:48):
sinister than their names would lead you to believe. For instance,
one of the common punishments for someone who has broken
the codes or more as of the gang is for
someone to This is incredibly graphic, it may not be
suitable for all listeners. Is for someone to uh to
(05:10):
be wounded UH in their anus and then to be
assaulted by an HIV positive member of the gang. That
happens in South African prisons. In some cases, the prisoners
have almost as much power as the staff that technically
keeps an eye on them. So we have very very
(05:30):
very very very nice, sometimes called unfairly called i Kea
prisons in Norway, and then we have very very very
bad and dangerous places, and the US, depending on who
you ask, can fall somewhere in between. One thing that's
no secret is that there are a ton of prisons
and jails here in these United States. Yes, and you're
(05:52):
speaking about a ton of different places right very and
each each of those is its own ecosystem in lot
of ways. In the US, we have over seventeen hundred
state prisons, over a hundred federal prisons, and nine hundred
and forty two juvenile correctional facilities. But let's keep going here,
three thousand, two hundred and eighty three local jails and
(06:15):
seventy nine jails that are on um indigenous people's reservations.
And you might be saying to yourself, given the population
of our country, those numbers actually seem kind of low, yeah,
which means severe overcrowding in many of the nation's prisons.
Yet let's keep in mind this does not count military prisons,
immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the
(06:39):
many US territories. And that's not to say that the
kinds of things Ben, that you described taking place in
South African prisons don't happen in the United States. Largely
due to this overcrowding. UH. In New Mexico's State Penitentiary
in February of nineteen eighty, UM, prison inmates essentially took
over the facility and got a hold of what you
(07:00):
would call snitch files, where folks that were actually you know,
reporting on you know, illegal activity. Um, they end up
in these physical files in the prison warden's office, and
the folks that kind of took over the facility found
those single those people out and did things very much
in line with the kinds of tortures and punishments that
Ben was describing taking place in South Africa, involving genital
(07:23):
mutilation and you know, hanging from the rafters you know,
by um their necks and things like that, just absolute
unimaginable terror. And there has been a growing discrepancy between
the way that prisons in the US are depicted in
works of fiction, versus how day to day life is
(07:43):
for the inmates and the staff alike. The truth of
the matter is that conditions at these sites can vary widely,
sometimes due to issues of funding, and sometimes due to
the type of crimes a given inmate maybe found guilty of. Meeting.
For example, there are a lot of people who might
be in jail for a comparatively short amount of time,
(08:07):
and some some of our fellow listeners may have had
this experience at some point in their lives. In some cases,
you can also participate in work release programs. This means
that someone who's convicted of a crime and has jail
time to serve can serve that time on nights and
weekends such that they are able to hopefully maintain employment
(08:29):
while serving out their sentence, still be a part of
their local community, and hence be less likely to end
up back in jail. Jeffrey Jeffrey Epstein UM did definitely
have an extreme version of a work release program and
uh check out episode three on Jeffrey Epstein. I think,
(08:50):
depending on audience interest, I think we need to do
an episode for just to look at j Lane Maxwell exclusively,
I would agree with you. So what about the other
extreme of prisons, what like, if that's the if the
Epstein's and the white collar criminals of the world go
to what has sometimes been described as camp fed. You
know what, what's the what's the other the other far
(09:14):
end of the spectrum? Here you're talking about super max
facilities and this is um, it's a it's a different
kind of torture. I think being alone for long long
periods of time. Uh, inmates in places that would be
considered super max facilities could be alone in solitary confinement
(09:37):
for a year more than a year years um and
then a lot of times when they're when they're experiencing
that kind of thing, they will get some kind of
moment to themselves, basically an hour to be outside during
a single twenty four hour period. I'm not mistaken there
have been changes in the law surrounding confinement of solitary
(10:00):
isn't isn't it I mean a little bit more regular
than it used to be? Or is it still just
completely up to the discretion of prison officials, Because I
thought there were some human rights cases that sort of
prevented just Willy nilly shoving people in solitary and throwing
away the key. Uh. In two thousand and twelve, there
was a federal class action lawsuit against the Bureau of
Prisons and people who run the a d X shoe
(10:23):
or secure housing, security housing unit, it's the nice name
for these prisons. Uh. The case was dismissed, So now
I'm it's it's enormously controversial. The u N has condemned
the practice, but the the u N writes a lot
of condemnations without a lot of teeth behind them. And
(10:45):
super max is Uh, it's a prison within a prison.
And that thing that you're describing, matt where they get
outside time for an hour or whatever. It's pretty depressing
right there in a different cage outside. Yeah. So we
see this, We see this huge and this huge discrepancy
(11:07):
between some prisons or some detention facilities and another. But
one thing is not up for debate, going to a
point I believe you raised earlier. No, this doesn't sound
like a ton of facilities, right, given that the population
of the United States is in the three millions. The
US prison population, however, the actual people incarcerated is huge.
(11:30):
There was a two thousand eighteen report from the Bureau
of Justice Statistics that found, okay, the numbers are a
little walking, right, but they found almost two point two
million people are caught up in the system, or as
many as almost two point three million people, and that
came from the end of two thousand sixteen. That means
(11:52):
if we adjust for the population of this country, we
find a disturbing statistic. For every one thousand people residing
in the United States, approximately six hundred and fifty five
are behind bars as we speak, for one reason or another.
But there's another way to think about it. We we
(12:13):
can get lost in these numbers, and I think of
proportion is a good way to to to slice the
pie or let you see the larger picture. But we
have a good analogy to our good comparison would be
a better way to say it. Yes, So, if the
population um currently in US prisons was the population of
(12:35):
one city, it would be a city larger than Dallas
or Philadelphia, which as we know, we're pretty pretty populous
metro areas. It would in fact be one of the
ten largest cities in these United States, just a little
smaller than Houston, UM and a little bigger than Phoenix.
(12:57):
Staggering numbers. It's also again even more disturbing when we
realize that these numbers do not count hundreds of thousands
of people currently held in those other facilities, the military prisons,
the prisons and US territories, the detainment centers for immigrants
and their children, the ones that are often much more
(13:19):
difficult to even find out what those populations look like.
That's true, But wait, Ben, what if there's even more
to this story? Surely you jest, No, I do not.
What if there are other facilities, not detainment centers, immigration centers,
(13:39):
not your standard military prison. What if there's a much
more secret place where people could be held and are held,
Facilities like those closed cities in the Cold War that
do not officially exist, right, places where the normal laws
do not apply, where it's talking no real trials, none
(14:00):
of the normal avenues for parole, probation and so on,
severe constraints on your rights as an individual. What if
there are places where, in a very real sense, people disappear.
What exactly are these so called black sites? And we'll
get to that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
(14:28):
Here's where it gets crazy. Yes, it's true, this is
one of the things where we have a conclusive, concrete,
definitive answer black sites did and this is speculative, but
they probably do still exist almost certainly. Yeah, And to
really get a full picture of the development of this,
we're gonna have to zip back in time to that
(14:49):
fateful day on September eleventh, two tho one, when what
is officially recognized as a terrorist attack in New York
City and washing in DC call caused the Central Intelligence
Agency to um start to think outside the box, outside
the existing prison boxes, military situations that were already in place,
(15:12):
and to really go further um and create an entire
new network of facilities. I would say they're looking outside
of that system, as well as the judicial system in general, UM,
as well as maybe even oversight from the United Nations.
And it takes one of these. It takes something as
you know, life changing, as earth chattering politically and just
(15:35):
in terms of like day to day existence as September
eleven to really cause this kind of sea change where
it's like, you know, um, the ends justify the means
is sort of the order of the day. Right. The
idea here is something that we've we've encountered in previous
arguments for torture, which is the ticking time bomb scenario.
(15:57):
You have an individual that you cannot legally arrest, but
this individual has knowledge they could help you prevent another
huge disaster. So you do what's called an extraordinary rendition.
We move beyond the law. You take them someplace where
the law does not fully apply. The CIA started looking
(16:19):
for outside facilities where they could do this. They could
detain and interrogate people they believed it's a very important
distinction people they believed to be high level Al Qaeda suspects.
These secret prisons, known as black sites, were used by
the CIA to interrogate the folks they thought were terrorists,
often using um what are called enhanced interrogation by some
(16:43):
what are called torture techniques by others to obtain intelligence.
And we know that this program began mere days after
the events of September eleven. I mean, you want to
dive into the history, Yeah, we should and can do that,
and we're gonna do that with the help of a
u N report that was officially titled Report of the
(17:07):
Special Report Tour on the Promotion and Protection of Human
Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism by Ben Emerson. Yeah,
they put that's the uh, that's the guy right in
the report. This is where they write names like this
because people have already like tuned out by the time
they get to special reperture and they're certainly not going
(17:28):
to read the actual reporter. We will um, and we're
gonna give you a little exert here that I think
we'll we'll maybe do this round robin style. UM. On
seventeen September two thousand one, President Bush authorized the CIA
to operate a secret detention program. It's always written by
a brick because he's spelled program p R O g
R A M M E. That's the way. That's the
type of English the UN uses that right, Interesting, that
(17:50):
makes sense, okay. A secret detention program which involved the
establishment of clandestine detention facilities known as quote black sites
end quote on the territory of other states, with the
collaboration of public officials in those states, and just to
continue the quote here. At about the same time, he
George W. Bush allegedly authorized the CIA to carry out
(18:13):
extraordinary renditions, the secret transfers of prisoners outside any lawful
process of extradition or expulsion, enabling them to be interrogated
whilst in the formal custody of the public officials of
other states, including states with a record of using torture.
At the beginning of August two thousand to the Justice
(18:34):
Department's Office of Legal Counsel purported to authorize a range
of physical and mental abuse of terrorists suspects known as
enhanced interrogation techniques. So that's that's the end of the quote.
And that's a pretty pretty easy summation there. Now, people
who support the existence of black sites and the activities
(18:58):
that took place within these sites will insert a thousand
footnotes into that single paragraph, right and we will give
those We will give those opponents of this right up there.
Do However, everything in that paragraph is factual, that all
actually happened. It has been vetted. We can look at
(19:19):
examples of what black sites actually are. This iteration of
black sites. The first one was built in Thailand. It
was built shortly after the September eleventh attacks. That is
just surprising to to hear I think of thinking of
Thailand as being the first place. Well, Thailand is not
(19:39):
a place that pops up on the map in a
lot of areas. So for instance, if you suspected the
CIA to do something like this, one would naturally and
rightfully imagine that they would have a site that was
closer to the fracas, right, but this is Saudi Arabia,
probably sure, Yeah, I mean they would probably just rent
(20:00):
of the one Saudi Arabia already has. And this is
all done with full cooperation from these various governments, that
is correct. Yeah, So wonder what that negotiations like. Is
it calling in a favor, is it saying like, how
can we do this together and make it mutually agreeable?
Or is it basically just saying like, this is what's happening.
We will withhold aid from you if you don't help
(20:20):
us out. I'm wondering, I respect you. Well, there's a
there's a later on we'll get to an example from
Poland that has a good blow by blow of how
this happens. But I suspect it is a case by
case basis. You know, this is very much a situation
in which U. S. Intelligence is building the car while
they're driving the car, you know what I mean. Uh So,
(20:41):
back to Thailand, the American officers, they are repeatedly water
boarded at least two detainees. This was part of those
interrogation techniques that the rest of the world, by the way,
would later call torture. So waterboarding, for anyone who as
an experience that may sound relatively tame at first, it's
(21:04):
a simulation of the experience of drowning. So to anybody
who has been in danger of drowning ever knows that
it is not a pleasant way to go. What happens.
And there are you know, there are training courses where
people who will later use those techniques have to experience
it for themselves because you need to know at what
(21:26):
point to stop. But here's what happens. You are you
take the victim and you have a rag over their
mouth and their nose important, and then you just continually
pour a steady, consistent amount of water into their mouth
and nose through the rag while they're laying back or
(21:49):
sometimes even at a lower angle than while their feet
are elevated above their head. Yeah, and you know, usually
on like a plank. Right. And while that sounds tame
because you could say, well, they're not beating the snot
out of people. They're not breaking fingers or collecting finger
nails or teeth or whatever. This this is a incredibly
(22:13):
from experience, this is an incredibly unpleasant thing. I was
not water boarder by government agency, but it is an
extremely unpleasant experience, and more importantly, it is one that
can be repeated at nauseums. You can keep drowning people,
bringing them back, asking them to confess to something, and
then just almost drowning them again. It's like death simulation.
(22:36):
I mean, you know the things that kick in situations
like that are terror and anxiety and panic and and
just utter, you know, like not feeling safe in any way.
I think you hit it right on the head when
when you use the t word terror being inflicted then
(22:56):
on someone you know, perhaps suspected of being a terrorist,
because you know, it's it's exactly what you're saying. You're
simulating drowning, right, but it's it's it's like the most
advanced flight simulator that's ever existed, if you're thinking about
it as a one to one to flying or to drowning,
(23:16):
because your body experiences and then you know this exactly physically,
exactly what it would do if it were drowning. Now
I need as a bucket in a rag table. It's
also sometimes called dry drowning, which I think is a
more sinister phrase there. It can cause some serious physical damage,
(23:38):
even if a person does not die while this is happening.
And to to be fair on the side of people
who support this interrogation technique, it is it is described
as something that the people administering it have received extensive
training and such that they're not going to accidentally keep
(24:02):
someone asphyxiated for too long. All in all, there were
ten CIA prisoners that we know of who were arrested
or held on the soil of Thailand before being transferred
to Guantanamo Bay, which we all knew would show up
at least partially in this episode. Guantanamo Bay is is
located on the island of Cuba, and these folks were
(24:26):
transferred without any kind of due process or hearing. That's
according to a report by the Open Society Justice Initiative
from two thousand thirteen. Funny story about this, It is
the worst kept secret in Thailand. There There have been
successive members of the Thai government in the military in
(24:48):
the years following this, and one thing they all have
in common, as they have all denied that this ever happened,
that there was a black site. It's all a big misunderstanding.
These are not the droids you're looking for. These prisons,
we're not just in Thailand. They were initially located in
at least eight different countries. They were classified, and they
(25:08):
were so classified that information on each one was known
only to the President, a few other US officials, and
the people doing the dirty work. And you know, there
were a lot of problems pretty obviously on the on
the face of these kinds of things, but I would
have seen that country well yeah, um, but a lot
(25:31):
of these problems started to show up pretty quickly after
there these sites were established. Yeah, at least twenty six
people were held due to cases of mistaken identity. Um.
There's there are a couple of great documentaries around surrounding this,
something about the taxi. I can't remember the name of it,
(25:51):
but there's a fantastic documentary that came out in the
mid two thousand's about a taxi driver that just ended
up at Quetanabo. Crazy. That's the thing. If you're there
due to a case of mistaken identity and you have
no recourse to getting you know, your case heard and
proving that you're not this person, at that point, you
just become like collateral damage of this system and you're
(26:14):
just stuck, like, what what do you do? It's it.
It gives me a panic attacks thinking about it. Also,
add to that the language barrier. You know, these uh
many of these interrogators would have a translator of some sort,
but the interrogators themselves were often not fluent in the
language spoken by the people being detained. So yes, at
(26:38):
least twenty six people, at least twenty six people were
totally not supposed to be their their name just sounded similar,
or there was a vague description, or they were turned
over when reporting suspected terrorists became incentivized, which is a
different problem. Second thing that cropped up almost immediately the
(26:59):
c i A. It's caught lying to Uncle Sam along
with some other members of the CIA who had a
problem with this, because again, although it's tempting and it's
easy and cognitively delicious to think these are monolithic entities,
they are not. There are people within their wheels, within wheels,
there are people competing for the same positions. There's a
(27:21):
left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
Kind of situation that crops up, and that's what compartmentalized
intelligence is all about so. According to The Washington Post,
in at least one case, an internal CIA memo relays
instructions from the White House to keep the program secret
from the Secretary of State. The guy whose job is
(27:42):
literally to know what's going on here. That was then
Secretary of State Colin Powell, and they wanted to keep
it a secret from him out of concern that he
would quote blow his stack if he were to be
briefed on what's going on. Wow. Wow, the guy that was, uh,
you know, giving a hearing in Congress showing the yellow cake.
(28:05):
He's the guy who you're like, yeah, we can't let
him know about this. He got misled several times, Yes,
he did in his career. So of a hundred nineteen
known suspects who were held, thirty nine of them were
um subjected to this were this story is full of
these absurd terms, sort of these sanitized versions of the
same idea enhanced interrogation. Was that a chainey thing? That
(28:27):
was a chainey thing? I feel like the I think
it was the lawyer who his name escaped you Yeah, no, yeah,
not you? Why oh yes? Yeah. The thing is these uh,
these these are like any other buzzwords often the original
author of the buzzword is he's not going to be
(28:50):
super jazzed about it. Yeah, no, it's true. Um, but
these techniques referred to pretty controversially as enhanced interrogation, were used,
and we'll get into more on that and just a bit.
But some of these things included, um, being slapped and uh,
this concept of walling, which is new to me, and
(29:11):
that's when people were slammed against walls, along with of
course water boarding and sleep deprivation. And you know, we
we've seen some of these photos with the forced nunity
from the Abu Grade prison where folks are forced to
stand on buckets for extended periods of time with like
bags over their heads and the completely stripped naked. Um,
it's just a lot of it comes down to humiliation
(29:33):
as well. Yeah, and at times, these this stuff included
even more egregious acts. There were incidents of physical abuse,
sexual assaults, threat I believe the photos you're referring to
specifically feature people being threatened with military dogs. The thing
(29:53):
about these techniques is they were chosen on purpose because
they could be applied repeatedly for days or weeks at
a stretch. And I just want to confirm off air.
We we checked back to this to make sure that
we were correct. It was John you John tune you Uh,
an attorney, law professor, former government official. He was the
(30:14):
author of the so called torture Memos, in which the
phrase enhanced interrogation, as you might assume, shows up quide often.
Seven of the people subjected to these techniques produced no
intelligence whatsoever. What do we mean when we say they
produced no intelligence whatsoever? We mean that they didn't even
(30:35):
produce incorrect intelligence. They didn't even panic and say, well,
maybe that guy I went to college with, maybe maybe
he's the one you're looking for. Or yeah, I'll say
anything you want me to, just please stop drowning me.
And at least three were confirmed to be subjected to waterboarding.
We know about the two in Thailand. There's one other,
but there are many, many more reports. A little bit
(30:58):
earlier in the show, we mentioned that we had a
a specific example that gives us a look at the
money and the operation in the blow by blow, day
by day operation involved let's pause for word from our
sponsor and then let's travel to Poland. Okay, so we're
(31:20):
back and we are now in Poland. You probably didn't
expect to head that way episode. No one expects to
go to Poland, I know, except for um the Germany
went there one time, if I recall, yeah, yeah, I
mean nowadays, no one expects to go to Poland. Yeah,
but it is interesting that we ended up there with
(31:43):
one of these black sites. It was one of the
first and one of the probably the most important europe
European black site. It was. It was there in Poland.
The CIA made a fifteen million dollar deal with their
intelligence agencies, their intelligence structure there to build the site,
and they called it Courts, or at least they referred
(32:03):
to it as Courts q U A r t Z. Yes.
The accommodations at Courts were not on the level of
a Norwegian prison. Instead, they they could only hold a
handful of detainees. There was very, very sparse accommodation. There
was a shed behind the house that was also converted
(32:26):
to a cell. Now, if this sounds a little bit clandestine,
it's because it was, you know, with the biggest the
biggest task or obstacle in front of the Polish and
American authorities was to make sure that this remained the
stuff They don't want you to know very much. They
wanted people to think this was just a villa, right
(32:49):
and if someone were to look, say via satellite, and
wanted to be too obvious that this was an illegal
jail prison to archer chamber that did not officially exist.
There was one room where detainees could ride a stationary
bike or use the treadmill if they cooperated. We do
know that despite the problems, despite the injustices evolved, the
(33:12):
system kept growing. It went global, it became an international franchise.
At least fifty prisons have been used to hold detainees
in over twenty well in twenty eight countries, and that's
in addition to twenty five more prisons in Afghanistan, twenty
in Iraq. UH. There's also there's also this story in
(33:34):
this room or in this allegation of floating prisons, which
I thought was incredibly devious and brutally clever. And it's
estimated that the US had seventeen of those UH starting
from two thousand one, which brings the total estimated number
of prisons operated by the US and our allies UM
in order to house alleged terrorists since the thousand one
(33:57):
two more than one hundred and other countries that held
suspects on behalf of the U s included I'm I'm
gonna caution, let's try not to do the Animaniac. Yeah,
it's a lot. You got Algeria, now you can't do
um Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, uh Did, Jibouti, Jibouti. Yes, that's
a Thesa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Libya, Lithuania, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan,
(34:27):
uh Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Somalia, South Africa, Thailand,
United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zambia, and according to the
Human Rights Watch, the US held detainees from many different
countries around the world, twenty one in all, including some
that will be easily recognizable and something that might be
(34:49):
a little bit surprising, so detainees from Algeria, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq,
Gaza in the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, or Mon,
Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Sweeten, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the UK,
and Yemen, including a guy named Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the
(35:12):
you know, the quote mastermind of nine eleven. Um outside
of Osama bin Laden of course, um. But he was
held in that Poland spot for quite a while there
where he was waterboarded and all the he was enhanced,
lee interrogated. Then he was moved several times to different places.
But it's interesting too to think that someone of such
(35:37):
a considered to be such a high level target would
be kept in that two story villa in Poland, just
hidden somewhere. Yeah, I'm sure the the security was, I'm
sure it was robust, but it wasn't enough. In several
of these black sites, the detainees were you know, they
(36:00):
they have been tortured for whatever information they were perceived
to have, and then they were shipped to a place
that was deemed more secure or at least marginally more
legal than That is where Guantanamo Bay comes into play.
Guantanamo or get Mo, as it's been called before, is
not exactly the same as a black site because it
(36:20):
was not purposefully built for secret detention in the wake
of nine eleven. Guantanamo Bay as a US possession has
been around for a long time, and it has a
It has a strange history because Guantana it's on Guantanamo
Bay Naval Base, right and and and it's been there
in some form since nineteen o three. So even when
(36:43):
the US and Cuba have very antagonistic relationships or you know, interactions,
Guantanamo Bay is still around and has stood the test
of time. So it does have this in common with
black sites. Detainees from these secret sites were sent to
Guantanamo obey and they were also subjected to enhanced interrogation
(37:05):
techniques there with some real, uh some real psychologically disturbing
torture as well. They tried to get into not just
physically threatened people, but also get into their heads and
uh humiliate them. Yeah. There's a twenty two five report
that was presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee, I
(37:26):
guess um, and it detailed the interrogation of one man
who was considered the twentieth hijacker in the nine eleven attacks.
His name was Mohammed al Katani. Might remember his name
from news reports over the years. Um. He was supposedly
forced to wear a bra to dance with a man
and do what we're called dog tricks while tied to
(37:49):
a leash, sit laid down so very much. Uh, just
breaking him down essentially psychologically. But but but military investigators
said this was not considered something that was prohibited um
so in and they did not consider it inhumane treatment either.
I gotta wonder, like, do you think there's a committee
(38:11):
that comes up with this stuff or is it just
sort of like improv or do you mean the torture
like that that's so specific? You know, it's like like
like do you think it was like the guards are
like the interrogators that's come up with this or is
there somebody higher level like committee or board that comes
up with quote unquote acceptable humane form Because obviously waterboardings
(38:32):
a go to because it's not going to kill them. Uh,
it's considered maybe less problematic than like attaching electrodes to
somebody in a car battery, you know, but like it's
definitely still pretty rough. But I'm wondering, like where do
these go to tortures come from? Like we definitely not improvised, Yeah,
I mean I don't think so either, But I'm wondering where,
(38:55):
like if there's a committee that there's specific job is
to come up with this stuff in some you know,
dark and room, well a lot of these techniques have
stood the test of time. It's not for nothing that
people decide to pursue the similar UH techniques of physical
or mental stress. I would I would draw everyone's attention
(39:16):
to earlier published memos and pamphlets from the CIA in
UH that were put out in South American countries, in
Central American countries that were meant to educate people on
how to be insurgents and meant to give you some
information about how to torture someone without killing them, because
(39:36):
the thing is you want to get them right to
the line, right. UH. There are some things that are
so messed up they sound like they occur in fiction,
but there are real cases. For instance, if you read
some of this stuff where someone who is going to
torture a detainee right will say whether for this government
or another government, they'll they'll walk in and they'll be
(39:59):
your friend on a chat with you. Make sure you're hungry,
you need anything, you like sprite. I heard your expect
Let's get this guy sprite. And then they'll have a
conversation like, Okay, look there's some stuff that we think
you know. We know you know it, and we want
you to tell us, but to me. It doesn't matter
(40:21):
what you say. You and I are going to be
quite close check this out. And then when they say
check this out, they will harm themselves in front of
the person, you know, like cut their arm such that
bleeds copiously, but not you know, lethally, not a north
to south kind of cut, just like flu vertical cut
like that with their arm hanging out of kimbo. And
(40:42):
then they'll hold it there and like, I just did
this to myself, What do you think I'm going to
do to you? That kind of stuff. You're not physically
hurting the person, but you're in your their head and
that thing. While it sounds like complete malarkey written by
a screenwriter somewhere, that has happened before, and people do
that because it works. So all this stuff and answer
(41:04):
to your question is not is largely not improvised. Yeah,
And it's also one of these things where it's like,
to the subject being on the receiving end of said torture,
they're like, go back to being nice again, whatever I
whatever I have to do to get you back to
where you were, where you were giving me a sprite,
you know, and being my friend. But I'll do that,
(41:26):
you know, it. Literally, it's like you're you're showing this juxtaposition.
You're like you're baiting and switching, and then you're like
whatever it takes to get back to that first version
of you. You know. So let's jump back here in time.
We're we were talking about that two thousand five report
they went to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and then
the next year, in September of two thousand six, UH,
(41:48):
the president at the time, George W. Bush, acknowledged that
the CIA had indeed held suspected terrorists in these places,
these secret prisons overseas in different countries. He also announced
the transfer of fourteen specific captured al Qaeda operatives. Again,
like you're just kind of he's just announcing this to
(42:09):
the public. We just say, okay, those must be al
Qaeda operatives, But he's saying fourteen captured al Qaida operatives
who are being transferred, including Mohammed bin al shib and
Abu Zubayah to to Guantanamo Bay. So two thousand six,
UH is when the President of the United States says, yes, indeed,
(42:30):
we are keeping people in secret places and we're shipping
people now to get and there's been a lot of
work leading up to this as well. There's some fantastic,
i would say, heroic journalists such as Dana Priest, who
did a lot of work for the Washington Post on
this subject. So when it was confirmed by the then president,
(42:51):
it was already something that was widely suspected or even
already considered to be true by people. A little more
on the fringes of the national and international conversation. Let's
fast forward. As you may know, neither the naval base
nor the detention center are closed. Last year January, President
(43:13):
Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep the detention
center open and also to approve the transfer potential new
prisoners to the site. So not only is it not closed,
it might actually grow. There was a well, there having
a series of legal challenges to this because these people
(43:34):
are often you know, they're not experiencing due process. Uh.
There have been people who have been held for years
and turned out that they were completely the wrong person. Right.
In June of this year, the Supreme Court of the
US rejected a challenge to the indefinite detention of guantanam
obeyed detainees who have yet to be charged. Imagine being
(43:58):
detained indefinitely no charges brought against you for almost twenty years.
Twenty years, that's how that's how long ago this was.
Now it's basically saying we have enough evidence, like this
is what you have to imagine the authorities saying to you,
as the individual, we feel as though we have enough
evidence to convince us that you were definitely and a
(44:21):
heinous person who has done heinous things or is plenty
of heinous things, but we don't have enough evidence to
you know, take you to trial anywhere, or we don't
have a place in which we can try you for
these crimes. It reminds me of the way they used
to be able to, like, you know, a king back
in the dark ages could just throw somebody in the dungeon,
(44:41):
you know, and throw away the key, with no trial,
no due process, and they wouldn't even have known what
they have done. You know, I think of the abuses
that that are likely inherent in this system. You know,
people with a grudge of people where someone maybe has
some dirt who knows. I mean, I'm you know, I mean,
I think it's certain. What I'm saying is when you leave,
(45:02):
when you lack accountability, um corruption tends to run free. Well,
and the other thing is just how how human beings,
through the legal ease and the manipulation of the law
are are categorized. Right. We we've talked about this before
on this show. But the concept of I believe it
(45:23):
was during the Barack Obama's presidency where I think it
was it was under his watch where males of a
fighting age in any country where the United States is
engaged militarily are considered an enemy combatants. Right. Yeah, Um,
that means if you're within that age range and you
are a male, then you could just be at a
(45:45):
black side. The assumption is right, This is this is
fascinating in a in a terrible, terrible way. We do
have to also again, and to be fair, we have
to point out that the cause some of these people
were victims of mistaken identity, because some of these people
were accused of crimes that they did not commit. It
(46:06):
does not mean that everyone there was innocent, absolutely right,
That's why it's so difficult. Right. And of the fifty
four countries that the Open Society that we mentioned at
the top of the show, the fifty four countries that
Open Society confirmed as having captured, held, question, tortured, or
helped transport these detainees for the CIA, Fewer than half
(46:28):
of them have opened any kind of domestic inquiry or
had any court cases challenging their involvement. Means, in a
very real sense, the stuff continues to officially not exist.
But here is the ultimate question. Did these black sites
and the interrogations performed within actually produce results? Plot twist
(46:49):
spoiler alert. The CIA believes so. In case that was
a big Shamalan moment for anyone, Yeah, they, I mean,
they almost kind of have to believe so. And we
have a here from the CIA Director John Brennan, or
at the time CIA Director John Brennan. UM. He gave
this official statement. Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees
(47:11):
on whom enhanced interrogation techniques were used, did produce intelligence
that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.
The intelligence gained from the program with critical to our
understanding of al Qaeda and continues to inform our counter
terrorism efforts to this day. Um Congress, this is out
(47:33):
of the quote. On the other hand, did did not
agree right right? So for uh, many of us listening,
or at least a few of us listening, this feels
like an ugly, ugly reality, you know what I mean.
War is brutal thing. And when we are when we're
in that hypothetical situation where doing something abominable to one
(47:57):
person may save hundreds of thousands, very close to that
needs of the many out number the needs of the few,
kind of cold logic argument. Right, what if those numbers
are just torture or do terrible things to one person
and save ten, Right, even then the ratio still holds.
(48:18):
Your say, you're you're creating more net good by doing
a little bit of evil. And the problem with that
kind of experiment is that it is very very rare
for someone to know with certitude that their activities prevented
a disaster or a catastrophe, because by preventing it, it's
(48:42):
never happened, you know what I mean. It's kind of
like the psychic prediction problem, whereas someone says, oh, I
have a premonition, Paul, mission control, decond do not take uh,
do not take your car to I don't know, and
to a trip on Thanksgiving or something, because there will
be an accident. So maybe they just go a different
(49:05):
route and nothing happens. You know what, I mean, or
take a flight, or take a flight and nothing happens.
So amongst the people who disagreed with that stance, amongst
the people who disagreed with the CIA's pro interrogation, pro
black site stance were members of Congress. Actually just Congress
disagree because one thing Congress used to really have a
(49:27):
problem with was being lied to in their December nine report,
which was called the Committee Study of the Central Intelligence
Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program. Again you have to love
the sexy titles. Uh, they found twenty different findings that
were published wherein they took the CIA to task. They
deemed the activities the legal. They said, he this doesn't work,
(49:48):
b stop lyne and and it went on and on.
The weird thing about the report is that it is
six thousand pages long. Five and twenty five of those
pages were declassified, along with an executive summary, which is
where most people got the facts. Right now, we do
(50:10):
have an answer to the the original question. We do
know the black sites did exist. They were highly illegal.
Despite the arguments made in court right and despite the
clear illegality as espoused by members of the legislative branch,
it appears the judicial branch of this government is stonewalling
(50:34):
at different turns, right, and they're saying, well, again, it's ugly.
It's a special case. We have to protect the many,
and we don't know if there are other black sites
out there. It feels like one of those terrible dark
truths ugly secrets that almost it's so weird because on
(50:58):
this end, you know, as American citizens sitting in this room,
in the privilege that we have just by existing in
this country, Um, it feels in this really messed up
way good to know that this kind of thing is
out there to ostensibly protect us here in this country. Right.
(51:21):
I think we have to acknowledge that there's like a
there's a weird sense of like, okay, well, at least
at least it's our my people, our people, our side,
the good guys doing this thing. Right. Um, those are
all like subjective terms to to put on the American authorities.
(51:41):
But I I wonder what that feels like, what it
truly feels like inside from let's say a Polish citizen
who finds out that there was a black side in
their country where this kind of thing is being carried
out on their soils. Well, I guess that all depends
on how much benefit they feel like getting from their
relationship with the United States, which varies from country to country,
(52:04):
and then those arrangements, right, I don't know like that,
like like the whole thing with Trump supposedly withholding aid
from Ukraine in that situation, Ukraine really needed that aid.
So there's a quid pro quote. I mean, not to
throw around the buzz term of the moment, but there
is an absolute benefit as a country where you say, oh, okay,
the US is giving us this military aid. Therefore maybe
(52:27):
we'll turn the other cheek or you know, well we'll
turn the other way if we think they're doing some
nefarious stuff on our turf because we feel like they're
actually actively helping us and having better lives. Sure, I
don't think you could. I don't think you could occur
without some kind of pretty heavy incentive like that. It's
just to your point that you're thinking, like, how the
average citizen, how do they feel about it? Well, yeah,
(52:48):
I mean you're talking. I mean, we we listed off
the number of places where these black sites existed in
In a lot of them, you can imagine the citizens
of those countries being at risk of ending up and
you know, and it's a it would be a very
small proportion of the citizens on almost not making you know,
(53:08):
wouldn't wouldn't even be a blip on on a calculator.
It's just, um, I don't know. To me, I'm interested
in the mindset of just somebody knowing that's happening, because
it's very it feels even though even though sitting in
this room as an American citizen kind of feels not okay,
(53:30):
but like I'm not scared about it, oh right, because
you probably won't get black backed for now, for now. Yeah,
that's I mean, that's a very good point because we
know in our previous episode it is completely possible for
people to lose or hide entire cities with populations of thousands.
So having a small area where you have a handful
(53:53):
or at the most hundreds of detainees who have been disappeared,
it's oh disturbingly plausible that that could happen, could be
happening now, and it would be no proof and maybe
the people who live in the next town or village
over just have have been have been given to understand
(54:13):
that no one goes near the old dairy factory. You
know what I mean, that's all it takes. It's all
it takes. And this this leads us to the question
that we cannot really answer. Will this happen in the future.
Have these black sites actually closed or have they just
moved further from the public eye. If that is the case,
then these locations remain the stuff they don't want you
(54:38):
to know. This ends our episode, but not our show. Yes,
please write to us on our social media if you
have thoughts on this episode, if you live in a
country where one of these black sites existed, or maybe
you heard about them, or you've had any experience with
any of this, and you can speak to it. Um,
(55:00):
please write to us. Find us on Twitter, on Facebook
where we're conspiracy stuff. We're conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram. UM.
If you don't want to do that stuff, you can
find us on Here's where it gets crazy. It's our
Facebook page. Um, what what's the official title for that.
It's a group Facebook group. It's a group, yeah, community page,
you could call it. Yeah. And you can go on
(55:21):
there and speak with your fellow listeners and with us.
We're on there occasionally too, and you know, get into
the conversation. We'd love to talk about this a little
further and know what you think and what you've experienced. Yeah,
and um, if you want to hit us up as
individuals outside of this show collective situation, you can do
(55:41):
that as well. I'm on Instagram exclusively at how Now
Noel Brown, mainly just hanging out with my kid and
I go to shows and um take a lot of
food picks. If you're into that, you can find all
that stuff and more there. And before I get black bagged,
you can find me on Instagram under the insanely creative
handle at Ben Bowlen. You can also find me and
(56:05):
several of my uh cohorts and fellow miscreants on Twitter
where I'm at Ben Bowlen h s W. Matt. Should
we have the conversation again about Instagram? I deleted it,
you guys? Really? Yeah? I deleted my Instagram, Yeah, the
one you just created. Yeah, it got too hot. It
(56:26):
was just, I mean, I was blown up. I had
like a hundred followers, a lot of deep fakes. Yeah,
I was getting d M. I'm just no, I'm just kidding.
It's still there. It's a Matt Frederick underscore. I heart
Oh it's not Oh fake, faked you out? I thought
it was still at face tats supreme, faced that supreme. Yeah,
(56:51):
that's not you. Well, I have been having a deep
conversation with the wrong person. Like man, you never know
if you're talking to me on line or not. Alright,
shout out to you at face tests supreme. But hey,
if someone hates the social needs, if someone doesn't care
to engage with it, we of course get it. We
did several episodes on how Facebook is bad for you,
(57:15):
and everything we said in those things either came to
pass or was already happening when we did those episodes.
We get it. You can reach us directly. We have
a call in number. We can go ahead, and we
we shared it at the top of the show. Yes,
but let's let's share it again. We are one eight
three three st d w y t K. One last
(57:37):
thing here before we go. Um, and it's just because
we're right at the end here and a very tiny
proportion of you are actually listening right now. Statistics prove
this is the case. We we've seen the numbers. Um,
just we see you, We see you those of that
have remained. Just just just a quick quiz for you
out there. Um, if you see some Terry's trying to
(57:58):
get froggy? Do you a fireboard those mother jammers have
the same thing as waterboarding them? Do you be hypothetical
them in the classical? Or see do you drags alm clowns?
So we'd like to hear your responses to this uh.
And in addition to hearing which of those three you choose,
(58:22):
we'd like to hear why you chose that, because you
know this is a subject of intense debate here in
the studio. And if none of those previously mentioned avenues
of communication quite bad, your badgers, We have good news,
despite it being here at the very end of the decade.
We have an email address you can write to us directly.
(58:44):
We are conspiracy and i heeart radio dot com. Yeah.
(59:06):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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